


Humanity

by Shorm (Bdoing), Vinnocent



Series: Humanity Is Watching [8]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Firefly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Body Horror, Body Modification, Conspiracy, Cybernetics, Family Drama, Family Feels, Multi, Needles, Partial Nudity, Polyamory, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-24 11:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2580563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bdoing/pseuds/Shorm, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tom's triggers become more dangerous to the group, they're forced to search for Humanity, the organization that had helped free River and Tom. What they discover, however, is an unexpected secret...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Marco, I have to go to work!” Peter argued.

“I… I know, Papá,” Marco said. “But－”

“Marco, I appreciate your concern,” said Peter, “but I can assure you that the planet is perfectly safe.”

“It’s not the planet I’m concerned about!”

“Then what?”

Marco watched his father for a moment, then collapsed wearily onto the edge of his bed, folding his head in his hands. “I saw her, Papá. I saw Mamá.”

Peter stared at his son, utterly stunned at this new revelation. “What?”

Marco rubbed his face and took a deep breath, but he still couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. “Just a bit ago, we got pulled in by an Alliance Cruiser for flying too close,” he said. “They found it necessary to survey our contents and bring us in for interview. And the woman who… _interviewed_ me… was Mamá. Was… Eva Guerra.”

“Oh, mi hijito…” The expression on Peter’s face was a mixture of pain and nausea. “Those are very common names…”

“No, listen－!”

“You were very young when she died,” said Peter, “and I know it’s emotional for you, but you can’t let yourself get confused just because you want something to be true!”

Marco gawked up at his father. “You think I’m confused?” he demanded. “You think I can’t tell a stranger apart from her?” He jumped to his feet and stormed over to the equipment wall, pulling out the shallow drawer that served as a desk. Carefully, he removed the writing surface to show the shallow storage area beneath, which held a few photos, some jewelry, and a fresh flower. “I see her every day; I’m not going to forget her.”

Peter stared at the display. It was small and minimal, but it concerned him all the same. “You pray… _every_ day?” he asked.

Marco nodded, feeling suddenly awkward and not understanding why. “I don’t… I don’t really care about church or… being righteous or whatever. I just… Yeah, I pray for her.” He looked at his father, lost. “I’m supposed to, aren’t I?”

Carefully, Peter reached out and slid the drawer back into the wall. “I think, maybe, it’s a bit much…”

Marco shook his head. “No, you don’t understand…”

But Peter grabbed him to keep him focused. “No, Marco, listen,” he insisted. “You’re already very stressed. Don’t lie to me; I know you are!”

“You have no idea…” Marco muttered, rolling his eyes.

Peter nodded, taking this as agreement, and continued, “And you have been, apparently, obsessing over your mother.”

“It’s not obsession! It’s love!” Marco insisted. “I care what happens to her! Don’t you? You used to!”

Peter sighed and shook his head. “Marco… I _was_ obsessed. But that has passed. Your mother…” Peter swallowed hard, feeling like he was choking on the words. “Your mother is dead. There is nothing more that can happen to her.”

Marco laughed and leaned back against the wall. “Yeah, you’d think so, huh?” he said.

“Marco, that woman was not your mother,” Peter insisted.

“She called me ‘hijo’!”

“Everyone calls you ‘hijo’!” Peter insisted. “You’re very endearing!”

Marco rolled his eyes again. “Yeah, so endearing that she beat me and tried to put a slug in my ear.”

Peter just blinked at him. “What?”

Marco sighed heavily, then said, “An alien slug. It crawls in through the ear canal and takes over your brain! That’s how they’re controlling her!”

“Are you shitting me?” Peter demanded, suddenly a lot angrier.

“No, I swear!” Marco insisted. “I can prove it! Okay? I can prove it to you, if you’ll just－”

“This isn’t funny, Marco,” Peter growled.

“Do I look amused?!” Marco demanded as Peter turned away and headed for the door. “Papá, I’m serious!”

“Stop it!” Peter snarled. “Stop it right now! I do not want to hear this from you again!”

“Papá, no! Please!” But the door was slammed shut in Marco’s face.

－ －

Now…  
Tom threw Jake back into the door, slamming it shut just as Marco reached it. “NO!” Marco shouted, throwing all his weight against the door. But he was too later; Tom had already triggered the lock.

Marco turned to Aximili who was still running to meet him with Rachel. “Ax! Get this door open!” he ordered. “Rachel, find another way in! And do either of you know where the fuck King is?”

Both pointed to the locked door and said, “In there.”

“Ave María…” Marco growled.

“Hey, Marco, have you considered ‘pausa’?” Tobias asked over the intercom as Ax set to work on the electronics and Rachel ran off somewhere.

Marco glanced around for the intercom button, then pressed it and replied, “I think Jake’s having a bit of difficulty getting the word out while having the shit beat out of him.”

“You do realize that I’m on the intercom right now?” Tobias countered.

Marco hit his head against the wall. “Yeah, okay, do it.”

A moment later, Jake pulled the door open, sporting a split lip and the beginnings of a black eye. “Do you think you could have taken a bit longer?” he asked. “I was having so much fun.”

“Shut up,” Marco said, pulling him into a grateful hug then pecking him briefly on the lips. “Are you okay?”

“I’d answer, but you told me to shut up,” Jake pointed out.

“Fuck off,” Marco said with a relieved grin. He pushed Jake aside and entered the room, finding Erek checking over the fallen Tom. “What the hell happened?” he demanded.

Erek grimaced apologetically. “It seems that one of his trigger words may be medical jargon,” he admitted.

Suddenly, one of the ceiling tiles fell to the floor, and Rachel soon followed it. She looked around, then pouted. “Awe, did I miss it?”

“Your boyfriend fixed it,” Marco told her. “Used ‘pausa’ over the intercom.”

Her pout deepened. “That’s just cheating!” she whined, and Erek gave her a skeptical glare.

“We have got to get the full list that Alan had known,” Jake said. “We can’t keep doing this.”

Rachel spread her hands helplessly. “Melissa said she was working on it, because they’d originally removed the data and had Alan memorize it for security reasons, so she’d have to get into Mr. Universe’s systems first,” she explained.

Marco nodded and added, “Right, but we can’t talk to her while the Cortex is down, and we have no other way of contacting her group.”

“There is one other person who might know of a connection…” Ax reminded them.

Jake sighed. “I suppose we are close to Aberdeen…”

“Oh hell no!” Tobias objected over the intercom.

Jake shrugged. “Alright, that’s fair,” he said. “She’s your mother after all. So I guess you’ll be fine watching Tom for us during our next job?”

“... I’ll change course.”

－ －

“Y’all flew all the way out here jus’ t’ ask me that?” Loren asked, staring in disbelief at Tobias and Jake, who were standing on her porch and leaning back against the rails.

Jake raised an eyebrow. “Well… We sorta had to,” he said. “Cortex is down.”

Loren seemed surprised. “Is it?”

Tobias groaned and rolled his eyes toward the sky. “Loren, you _gotta_ start turning the access point on! Most people leave it on all the time, or at least on a schedule.”

“Well, I guess most people’s made of money,” Loren sneered. “Look, I don’t know anything about no group. You say Alan worked with ’em, it’s the first I heard of it. When he left, it seemed entirely his idea.”

“Told you,” Tobias said to Jake.

Jake rubbed his nose wearily. “Is there anything, anything at all you know about him that might help us find his contacts?” he asked.

“Well, I hear he’s got a brother,” Loren told him.

Tobias shook his head. “Ax was born after Elfangor left the Andalites. Conceived after, actually,” he told her. “And he didn’t see him again until Alan was dead.”

Loren’s expression finally shifted from stony determination to surprise and empathy. “He told you?” she said.

“About the Andalites?” said Tobias. “Yeah.”

Loren nodded. “Hold on,” she said before going back into the house. Jake glanced quizzically to Tobias, but Tobias just shrugged. A few minutes later, Loren returned, with a paper in hand, embossed with braille. “Every now and again, someone might come by and say ‘I saw your man over at such-and-such,’ and I’d tell ’em that I ain’t never had such a thing. But I wrote it down, just in case. In case somethin’ happened… to Tobias, or…” She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She handed the list over. “But there it is. Every place he’s been seen. I don’t know if it’ll help. Last one’s nearly twenty-years-old.”

Tobias ran his thumb lightly over the small piece of paper. “Loren, there’s three places on this list.”

She shrugged. “Well, at least you won’t waste too much time on it,” she said.

Tobias pocketed the paper anyway. “What changed your mind?” he asked.

She shook her head, scowling. “Because if an Andalite’s willing to tell you _shit_... Something bad is happening.”

Tobias and Jake exchanged glances. “Ma’am,” said Jake, “do you know what a Yeerk is?”

Loren’s lip curled. “Yeah,” she said, “that would qualify.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end of chapter notes for translations.

Not too much time later…  
“Is there a problem we don’t know of?” Malcolm Reynolds demanded of the identical brokers, Fanty and Mingo. “You got a sweet take kissin’ yer foot. How’s about you take your twenty-five percent, and we can talk about the next job?”

Fanty frowned disapprovingly. “Well, our end is forty, Precious.”

“My muscular buttocks it’s forty!” Jayne Cobb objected loudly.

“It is,” Mingo insisted, “as of now. Find anyone around going cheaper.”

Fanty continued, “Find anyone around going near a sorry lot like you in the first instance.” He pointed to Mal. “You’re unpredictable, Mal. You run when you oughta fight, fight when you oughta deal. Makes a businessperson a little twitchy.”

“Well, here’s a foul thought,” Mal snarled. “I conjured you two were incompetent; sent us out not knowing there were Reavers about. Now I’m thinking you picked us out because you did.”

“That were a sign of faith, Boy,” claimed Mingo. “And it doesn’t affect our forty per. Danger is, after all, your business.”

“Reavers ain’t business, double dickless!” cried Jayne.

The argument, however, was interrupted by the all too familiar sound of a brewing bar fight. This was a bit curious to Mal not only because it hadn’t been preceded by a shouting match but because it was a fight in a bar he was presently patron to which, somehow, did not yet involve him. He pushed a fan aside and was shocked at what he saw.

“Hey, a tussle!” said Jayne.

“Jayne…” warned Mal.

“Do you know that girl?” asked Fanty.

“I really don’t,” said Mal as he and Jayne gaped at River as she fluidly, elegantly took down each and every patron that came within her grasp.

Just as Fanty and Mingo were making off with their money and Mal was starting to measure the degree and method to which he should get involved, River was interrupted by a tall, muscular man, no older than barely touching thirty, with peach skin and a mop of curly, dark hair that hid every feature except a nose and jaw line that Mal could swear he’d seen before. That hand had barely lit on her shoulder when she moved into a roundhouse kick to the face.

He dodged and swept his foot toward the one of hers still on the ground. But all she had to do was continue her spin, hopping over his sweep as dainty as could be, coming up behind him with a knife to the back of his neck. But no sooner had she pressed it there then he had her arm in his grasp, forcing it down and forcing her toward his front. She only used the momentum to strike her free hand in a fist toward his throat, but he blocked that, too. She thrust her knee up, but he kicked her leg first.

He twisted her arm up and around her, so that she was made to turn around, hugging herself. He released her and pushed her forward into a table, but she smoothly tumbled over it, spun, and prepared to begin the fight anew.

From their vantage point/hiding place in their booth, Jayne watched in confusion. “Is they fightin’ or is they dancin’?” he demanded, and Mal had no answer for him.

River took a running leap onto the table, ran right across it, and jumped and spun toward the stranger, who grasped her arm and leg and swung her back to the floor as perfectly timed as though it were, in fact, a ballet. Unfortunately, the performance was interrupted by a newcomer.

Jake Motherfucking Berenson came running down the stairs, a Chinese man on his heels, making the really dumb mistake of not taking in the whole scene. “Pausa!” Jake ordered. The Chinese man stopped on the stairs, looked around, and all the screens went blank.

The stranger turned and glared.

“PAUSA!”

The stranger released River and put his hands out toward Jake, palms up, and wiggled his fingers at him in some strange gesture that Mal did not understand. River took the opportunity to try to hit him in the head, but he ducked again and struck at her chest. She arched back and kicked him in the hip. He grabbed her ankle and attempted to pull her off her feet, but she only flipped into another battle-ready stance.

“Eta kooram nah smech!”

River fell to the floor unconscious. All eyes turned to the upper platform, where Simon had finally arrived. All eyes including the stranger’s. With a growl, he took a running leap for the stairs. Jake made a fairly pathetic grab for him, shouting, “TOM! STOP!” But Tom ran up banister, right past the Chinese man, who grabbed his leg, shocked it, and pulled him down onto the stairs all in one fluid movement.

Simon paused at the head of the stairs. Suddenly uncertain if it really was a good idea to rush down to his sister. “How did you do that?” he asked.

The Chinese man turned to him with an unamused expression. “I’m a witch,” he deadpanned.

“... Modifications?” Simon guessed, and the man nodded.

Finally, Mal emerged from his seat, gaining the attention of the morons. “Jayne, get them out of here,” he ordered. “And you,” he said, striding up to Jake. “What did you call him?”

Jake squinted in confusion. “What?”

“Him!” Mal said, pointing and the tased man on the stairs. “When you shouted his name, what was it you shouted?”

Jake’s eyes slowly widened, and he swallowed nervously. “Look－”

Mal punched him in the face.

－ －

Mal closed the door on River’s unconscious and shackled form in the galley pantry. His crew sat around the dinner table, while Jake Berenson, Tom Berenson, and Erek King sat in observation lounge with Simon studying Tom with absolute fascination and no mind to his very recent mistake. Tom watched him with silent suspicion with his hands cuffed behind his back, lightly drugged with sedative.

Mal walked over to their little group, and Simon glanced up at him, then toward the pantry. “I should really－” Simon started, but Mal held up a hand.

“I believe you’ve got some storytellin’ to do,” said Mal. “What in the hell happened back there?”

“Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a ninety pound girl,” Wash teased. “’Cause I don’t think that’s ever getting old.”

“Do we know if anyone was killed?” asked Zoë.

“It’s likely,” said Mal. “I know she meant to kill me before the Doc put her out.” He returned his attention to Simon. “Which, how exactly does that work anyhow?”

“Trigger words,” said Jake. “They got ’em programmed in like robots. You give the command, they obey. Even if it’s to stop in their tracks or to sleep.” He glared at Tom. “At least it used to…”

“‘Pausa’,” said Mal, and Tom’s focus snapped toward him in an entirely unsettling manner. “You sayin’ that was supposed to have the same effect on your brother?”

“Similar,” said Jake. “It worked fairly recently.”

“Meaning he went off fairly recently?” asked Zoë, and Jake looked away.

“They must have been part of the same program,” said Simon. “The people who helped me break River out had intel that River and the other subjects were being embedded with behavioral conditioning. They taught me a safe word, in case something happened.”

“Your sister was in the military?” Jake asked curiously.

Simon blinked at him in surprise. “Military?” he repeated. “No, she was sent to an academy for geniuses.”

“Geniuses?” Jake laughed. Incredulously, he gestured to his brother. “He failed English! The language that he speaks!”

“So they were in different programs?” asked Kaylee. “How many of these were there?”

Jake and Simon exchanged glances. They didn’t know.

“So you two were working with the same people?” asked Zoë.

Simon shrugged. “The group I worked with was called Humanity,” he said. “There were hacked screens all over the Core with their graffiti: ‘Humanity is watching’.”

“I’ve seen those,” said Wash. “I thought they were some kind of motivational poster.”

“I thought it were a church,” said Jayne.

“I thought it was a perfume ad,” said Kaylee.

Mal turned to Jake, but Jake just crossed his arms and leaned into his seat. “I didn’t work with any group,” he said. “Tom was Marco’s idea, and he worked with Rachel on it. I didn’t believe him. I didn’t care. Tom signed up to be Alliance military of his own free will, knowing damn well what they do, ’cuz I told him. Telling me that they’d done things to his head to make him _more_ compliant? To turn him into a puppet? I didn’t believe it. In my eyes, he was one when he left.”

“I suppose that explains the differences in programming,” said Simon. “His ability to communicate has been greatly hindered, unlike my sister’s, but it seems that he may suffer less confusion. I wonder if they also lobotomized him?”

Jake shook his head. “No, they wanted his brain intact,” he said.

“I thought you said he was stupid,” said Jayne.

“That ain’t what they wanted it for,” said Jake. Mal realized then what was happening. Jake’s stony expression. His closed off body language. He was closing ranks. He was closing with Mal on the outside, and it made Mal ready to start a fight.

“So the both of you got your handbooks of pretty words to shut them down,” said Mal. “Either of you knew what for?”

“They didn’t say,” said Simon.

“And you didn’t ask,” Mal snarled. “Eight months! Eight months you’ve had her on my boat, knowing full well she could go monkeyshit at the wrong word, and you never said a thing!” He turned toward Jake. “And you! I don’t even know where to start with you!”

Jake just shrugged. “Okay,” he said.

There was a long stretch of silence in which Mal just stared at him. “‘Okay?’” he finally repeated.

“I’m afraid I’ve been unclear,” Jake said, standing. “Tom is my business. Mine and my crew’s. You ain’t a part of that. Comin’ here, explainin’, lettin’ this one poke at my brother, that was a kindness I didn’t owe you. Because I like you, Mal. But I can’t afford to trust you. And your pretty little timebomb ain’t my concern.”

“We interrupting somethin’?” the crew turned to see Rachel Berenson entering the galley with a rifle slung across her back and a pistol at each hip. Behind her was the unmistakable figure of Fox, with their copper and brass vulpine helmet and legs and intricate decoration of unknown but likely nefarious purposes.

“Did you find Humanity?” asked Jake.

“We found enough,” Fox said in their eerie, distorted voice.

“Then we’re done here,” said Jake, and he and Erek began to help Tom to his feet.

“I thought you said you didn’t know Humanity?” Mal growled angrily.

“That’s not what I said,” said Jake, leading his brother away.

“You’re keeping things from me!” Mal accused.

“Yep.”

“We went to war together!”

Jake hesitated at the doorway of the galley. Fox turned back to the galley, ribbons of light briefly dancing across the flat planes that made up the sides of their helmet as they no doubt scanned over the situation and calculated some kind of elaborate mathematics on how they might win it. But when Jake looked over his shoulder at Mal, there was a small amount of empathy there.

“Take chemical analyses of your food and medical supplies,” said Jake. “Compare them to your bloodwork. You’ll find your enemy there.”

Mal raised an eyebrow at that. “You mean _her_ bloodwork?”

“No, I mean your,” said Jake. “Collectively. All of you.” He turned again and pulled his brother through the doorway of the galley, Rachel following after.

Fox turned toward _Serenity_ ’s crew briefly. “By the way,” they said. “You have cops on the way. You might want to fly soon.”

“But I need to continue analyzing him!” Simon objected. “He could hold they key to River’s－!”

“That’s not going to happen,” said Erek. He held out a small data-porter to Simon. “But these are all the files of what I’ve found so far. Maybe they will help you.”

“Sooner than later,” Fox reminded Erek. Rolling his eyes, Erek left as well, and Fox after him, closing the door behind them.

Mal turned to Simon. “That which he said about the analyses, that something you can do?” he asked, and Simon nodded. “Then I guess you’re doctorin’ here again. Jayne, shut up.”

“I ain’t said nothin’ yet!” Jayne protested.

“Yeah, _yet_ ,” said Mal. He turned to Wash. “Wash, get us in the air _now._ Take us to Haven.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tom holds his hands out, palms up, and wiggles his fingers. This is ASL for "wait."


	3. Chapter 3

“We were lucky,” said Marco, as the crew, sans Erek and Tom, gathered on the bridge. “Happened upon good ol’ fashioned paint graffiti. ‘Humanity is watching.’ Rachel distracted the police while I got into their servers, cross-referenced photographs of other graffiti with the art style of the Humanity one, narrowed it down. We knocked on some doors and found our girl.”

“She just came out and admitted it?” asked Cassie.

“Hell no,” Rachel laughed. “But it was sort of obvious when she tried to hit us with a laser gun that don’t fit her hand. Apparently, it’s called a Dracon, an’ it was made for _lizards_.”

“Lizards?” Tobias repeated.

“Space lizards,” Rachel corrected.

“I assume she means the Hork-Bajir,” said Ax. “They are reptilian herbivores and one of the earliest conquests of the Yeerks, after the Taxxon homeworld. They are, however, very large, and the blades with which they harvest tree bark make them formidable in battle. A Dracon designed for a Hork-Bajir would be unwieldy in a human hand. She must have stolen it; if she was a Controller, she would have been equipped with a human weapon.”

Marco nodded. “That was our thinking, too,” he said. “We got her calmed down and explained our position. She took us to a man on the far side of town, convinced him to speak with us. From him, we learned that these people are _not_ Humanity, but simply fellow rebels that Humanity has approached. He knew of Alan and said it was the same way with him. He said Humanity’s only been really active for around a decade.”

“Do they know how to find them?” asked Jake.

“Yes and no,” said Rachel. “The coordinates we gave Tobias are to a supply site on Lennox. Apparently, Humanity’s actual location is super secret. But there are bots that pick up from Lennox and drop off things like data porters or waste that can't be incinerated. However, they’re concerned because, since the Cortex Crash, the bots haven’t been dropping anything off. He said we couldn’t track them because the bots will explode if they sense they’re being followed or interfered with, but we talked to Ax about it and he thinks that he can mask us.”

“And the sooner we get there, the better,” said Marco. “The Cortex finally rebooted while you were ‘busy.’ These two ‘allies of Humanity’ tried to get back in touch, but there was absolutely zero answer. They now _want_ us to find Humanity. They’re concerned the crash might have been an Alliance tactic to take them down.”

“Yeah, but you and Ax caused the crash,” said Jake.

“Doesn’t mean they didn’t make use of it while they had it,” said Marco.

Jake sighed and nodded. “Finally, all your paranoia over conspiracies comes to use,” he mumbled.

“It’s not paranoia,” Marco objected. “It’s preparedness.”

“Uh-huh,” Jake grunted. “Ax, work on that masking. Cassie and Tobias will assist you. Rachel, make sure we’re ready for anything that we might encounter. Marco, you’re with me.” On that last order, Jake took Marco by the wrist and hauled him toward the bridge airlock.

“Hey, no fair!” Cassie objected, laughing.

Marco shrugged with a playful grin. “But Ax needs a mechanical genius, Cassie!” he called back to her before disappearing out of sight with Jake.

“One day,” Tobias muttered to himself, returning his attention to the controls. “One day, I will go twenty-four hours without hearing about anyone’s sex lives.”

“Oh, honey,” said Rachel, running a hand through his hair, “no you won’t.”

Cassie shrugged. “He’s frustrated. It’s this, or he starts snapping at everybody,” she said. She turned to a very confused-looking Ax. “Okay, so masking. Does that start in the bridge or the engine room?”

“Actually, I think we should start with the static discharge spike,” said Ax.

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “While we’re flying?”

“Well,” Cassie said, rubbing her neck nervously, “this certainly will be an adventure.”

－ －

“So… what is Lennox like?” Ax asked, trying to fill the silence on the bridge. Tobias was still asleep, Jake and Rachel were still hitting each other in the cargo bay, Cassie was making the necessary modifications to the gravity rotor housing, and Erek and Tom were where they usually were. Which all meant that Ax was left with only Marco’s company as he worked on the passive antenna array.

“Hm?” Marco said, having _almost_ fallen asleep in the captain’s chair. He rubbed his eyes and glanced up at Ax, who standing on a large box that had been stacking in the pilot’s chair in order to monkey around with the cables above. “That does not look like a safe position,” he said.

“I can morph,” Ax said defensively.

“You can also die,” Marco pointed out. He watched for a moment, then decided there was no use fighting it and tried to remember what Ax had asked. “Lennox is basically a rock. It’s the moon of Salisbury, which is the last planet in the Xuan Hu system. Or Kalidasa system, whichever you want to call it. Personally, I think the Chinese names make more sense. Anyway, even though Salisbury was terraformed before my mom was born, Lennox never has been.”

Ax frowned. “Strange place for a supply site,” he said.

Marco shrugged. “Not really. Not if you’re on the down-low,” he said. “The Alliance doesn’t really monitor rocks with no population, so you can get away with a lot there. A lot of smugglers and pirates would stash goods on un-terraformed satellites. Of course, since everyone knows that now, you’d have to be really desperate for a hiding spot to actually use it.”

“Still, Humanity would have to be located somewhere close, would it not?” said Ax. “Perhaps they are on Salisbury.”

Marco shrugged. “Well, it depends on how big the bots' fuel cells are and how much they’re carrying. But you’re right. There’s not much near Lennox except the planet and…”

Suddenly, Marco sat up and started tapping at the panels on the captain’s control console. “What is it?” Ax asked.

“That guy mentioned that the supply site changes every so often,” Marco explained. “Which, duh, of course it would. Best way to stay secure is to keep moving. But what if it _is_ about proximity? What if Lennox is close to something it’s not usually close to? HA!” Marco pointed at the screen with a grin of victory. “Something like Cortex Relay Station 2K!”

Ax climbed down off his box. “What is that?” he asked, quickly making his way over. “What is a Cortex Relay Station?”

“Um… okay, well…” Marco ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how Andalites do their broadcast transmissions, but ours are coded microwaves. Which means they can only go so far before becoming a garbled mess. So, we have two rings of relay stations in the ’Verse. They pick up all the weakened transmissions just before they hit ‘garbled mess’ point, then blast them back out at full strength again. With these rings, the Cortex is accessible as far as Blue Sun.”

“Oh,” said Aximili. “I never really thought about that being a problem.”

Marco smirked. “Yeah?” he said, glad that humans had thought of something Andalites hadn’t.

Ax shrugged. “To use the terms you have used…Every one of our ‘access points’ is also a ‘relay station.’ The ‘signal’ is constantly, consistently bolstered. Other security measures are employed at each point to ensure that the data does not fall into the wrong hands. Of course, the fact that the illegal collection of private data is punishable with death is also a deterrent.”

“… Oh.” Marco distracted himself from his embarrassment by pointing at the screen again. “Well, the point is that we don’t have to follow the bots. I can guarantee that Humanity, or one of their groups anyway, is at Station 2K.”

Ax peered at the screen. “It says terraformed. Are these satellites livable?”

“Not really,” said Marco. “In fact, I doubt we could land the ship on it. But there’s facilities inside for any maintenance workers that might need to come out this way. Including living quarters. The perfect little hideaway for a bunch of anarchistic hackers.”

“It would also explain why the crash caused such a devastating blow,” said Ax. “It’s even possible that they were discovered during repairs.”

“Mm-hmm,” Marco agreed. He stood from his chair and stretched. “I’ll go tell Jake and Tobias. See if they agree on changing course.”

“Then I suppose I should tell Cassie her work is now unnecessary,” said Ax.

But Marco disagreed, “No, we still need masking. There’s no telling what security they have. They don’t know we’re good guys, so the best move will be to sneak up on them.” He glanced back at the pilot station. “Get that box out of the chair though. I’m pretty sure there’s another way up there.”

“There is,” Ax agreed, “but it is blocked by a container marked with a warning for explosive material.”

Marco groaned and rubbed at his eyes again. “Gorrammit, Rachel…”

－ －

The journey to Cortex Relay Station 2K was simple and uneventful. As Marco had guessed, the ship could not land on the asteroid, but the shuttle could. Jake and Rachel both donned their space suits, then helped Ax into his own. Of course, Erek didn’t actually need one. Jake would have liked to have taken Marco, but the “four to a shuttle” rule was already stretched enough with the heavy android, and he needed Ax and Erek for their technical skills.

It took some exploring, but Erek eventually found the access hatch and opened it. They all climbed in, and Erek shut the door behind them. Air rushed in around them, then a panel lit giving them the go ahead to move out of the room and breathe.

Jake glanced at Erek, who nodded and moved ahead first. He opened the door in front of them and stepped out into a dimly lit hall. He then turned back to them, and his hologram changed from someone who was wearing a spacesuit to someone who wasn’t. “It’s safe for you,” he said.

Jake glanced at the readings on his suit’s monitor before trusting Erek and taking off his helmet. Rachel and Ax followed his cue. “Well, it’s certainly a friendly-looking place,” Jake grunted as he removed the rest of his suit.

“I am concerned by the fact that only the safety lights are on,” said Erek. “If a group was living here, shouldn’t there be more activity?”

“Maybe they left already,” said Ax.

“Maybe Marco wasted our time with his stupid guesswork,” said Rachel.

“Maybe we should stop chatting and start searching,” said Jake, and he pushed forward to lead them down the hall.

The scene, however, did not get any friendlier. The station was cold and dark and too clean. It was hard to believe anyone had ever occupied the space. As they passed a wall panel, Rachel quickly checked the station diagnostics. “Hey!” she called. When they turned back to her, she pointed to the map. “Network Access was in use a couple days ago, when the crash happened. Seems like the place to look.”

Jake nodded. “Good work,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Rachel followed the map’s directions through another hallway and down two floors, coming to a thick steel door with a sign that read NETWORK ACCESS. She glanced back over her shoulder at her comrades, then carefully pushed the door open. What she found was not what she expected.

In the dark room, a lone figure sat slumped in a chair. Pale, sweaty skin gleamed ghostly under the single fluorescent light, dirty hair obscuring the face, and bone-thin arms and legs hanging limply. The truly alarming part was that this figure had almost a dozen thick cables plugged into their spine.

Erek rushed in to the figure’s side, measured their vitals, carefully unplugged the cables, and laid them on the floor on their back. “She’s alive,” said Erek. “But she needs immediate medical attention.”

But Rachel couldn’t move. All she could do was stare. “Melissa?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Shorm for Mandarin translation.
> 
> Xīngqī = Monday

Melissa Chapman groaned awake and looked around her. She was in a bright, white room. A medical room. There were two exam tables (one of which she was occupying), some lights and tools, and four jars of dried plant material. That was it. The cupboards she could see into were entirely empty. Some of the cupboard doors were dented, and one glass pane featured a spiderweb of cracks.

She listened carefully to make sure no one was near, then eased her way out of bed. It was hard to get her balance, and she felt dizzy, but she pressed on anyway. She soon found that she was inside a ship. It seemed familiar somehow, but also wrong. Surreal. Like an old home she was revisiting upside-down.

She made her way to the cargo hold, where she found the main airlock open to a warm, dry breeze. Carefully, she eased her way down the staircase, over to the opening.

“Well, Erek seems to know this place, and the mission’s friendly enough,” said a voice just out of view. “But all the help they have to give is Blue Sun food and medical. We gotta go three days without telling ’em why we don’t want that.”

“I just… I’m worried about her, Tobias,” said Rachel’s voice. “The condition she was in… How does that happen?”

“I can’t eat when I’m hooked up to the Cortex,” Melissa answered, coming out to meet them.

Rachel jumped at the sight of her. “Melissa!” she cried. “You shouldn’t be up yet!”

“What day is it?” asked Melissa.

“Xīngqī,” said Rachel.

Melissa shook her head and leaned, exhausted, against the side of the ship. Getting the idea, Tobias replied, “The 23rd.”

Melissa nodded. “I need… I need to hook up to the Cortex,” she said. She tried to push away from the ship, but found that such an endeavor required more strength than she currently had at her disposal.

“What?” Rachel demanded. “No way! Look at you! First thing we need to do is get food in you. Erek put you on the most minimal amount of IV fluid he could.”

Melissa waved off her friend’s concern. “It can wait,” she insisted. “They… They’re waiting… They don’t know…”

“What?” demanded Rachel. “Who’s waiting?”

“My… my…” The world tilted, and suddenly, Melissa fell.

－ －

The next time she woke up, she was not in the infirmary, but someone’s house, lying on their lumpy, threadbare couch which might have once sported a floral pattern. She tried to sit up and someone immediately pushed her down. “Who’re you?” she slurred.

“My name is Erek King,” said the stranger. “I need you to lie down.”

“Is it still the 23rd?” she demanded groggily.

“Er, yes,” he said. “But you need to－”

“No, I have to…” she protested, trying to push him away from her. “Have to… won’t be there… much longer…”

Erek scowled down at her. “Who?” he asked. “What are you talking about? Please stop trying to—”

“No, let go, I－” Melissa was cut off when she began dry heaving uncontrollably.

“That’s it,” Erek said to someone else, moving away from her. “We _have_ to put her on a proper drip. I don’t care what’s in the medicine, as long as it works.”

－ －

When she woke up again, she was on the same couch but a lot less dizzy. There was an IV tube running into her arm. Rachel was sitting on the floor next to the couch, her back resting against it and her legs pulled up to her chest.

“What day is it?” asked Melissa.

Rachel jumped and turned toward her. “Melissa, you’re awake again!” she cried. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”

“What day is it?” Melissa repeated, ignoring Rachel’s questions.

Rachel frowned. “It’s the 24th,” she said.

Melissa stared at her childhood friend for a moment. Then, she started crying. The crying quickly became bawling.

“Hey!” Rachel said, raising up onto her knees and tugging at Melissa’s arms. “Hey, it’s okay! What’s the deal with the dates? Everything’s going to be okay.”

Melissa just shook her head, sobbing. “They think… They’ll think I hate them,” she moaned.

“What? Who will? Humanity?” asked Rachel.

“No, Mom… Mom and Dad,” she said through her sobs. “I left them. I left them all alone in that place.”

“What? Where? I don’t understand.”

“I have to… I have to be there next time,” Melissa insisted. “I have to let them know I love them.”

“Melissa, you’re not making any sense,” Rachel said. “Please, you need to eat.”

Somehow, Melissa managed to quell the tears enough to nod her agreement, and Rachel quickly ran off to fetch something. Rachel had been right; Melissa was going to need to get her strength up if she wanted to reconnect on the 26th.

They started her off on broth, but she was insisting on food by the next day, so Erek put her on pureed chicken and basil. When she proved her ability to articulate, stand, and walk around without trouble, Erek took the IV out. There were compliance drugs in the medicine, they explained. Melissa nodded, she knew.

“Why were you there all alone?” Rachel finally asked once Melissa was feeling well enough to be visited by the whole crew, aside from Jake, who was babysitting Tom while Erek and Rachel were busy. There was, of course, no separating Tobias from Rachel for any significant period, and Jake had thought it better that the tactical Marco and the alien Ax were there to hear her out and make their inquiries. Cassie was there to remind them all when they were being rude. “What happened to Humanity?”

Melissa shrugged. “I admit I pushed myself too much,” she said. “I just can’t stand leaving the Cortex. I feel so small and useless on my own. And then something happened in the Cortex. It was like a surge to my brain. I did wake up, but I had trouble disconnecting myself. I was so weak. Maybe if I hadn’t pushed myself, I’d have been able to handle it…”

“Yeeah…” said Marco, running a hand through his hair. “That… That was us. Sorry.”

Melissa shrugged. “You didn’t know. I don’t let anyone know how Humanity’s run.”

“Wait,” said Rachel, leaning forward. “What do you mean ‘how Humanity’s run’? You mean that you shoving Cortex feeds into your spine runs the whole organization?”

Melissa laughed at that. “Humanity’s not an organization, Rachel,” she explained. “It’s an alias.”

“What?”

“You mean… _you_ are Humanity?” said Tobias. “All of it?”

Melissa nodded. “I discovered what was going on with my family when I was sixteen,” she explained. “I tried to help them, and I was nearly killed for it. They risked everything to save me, and the only option I had left was to run away. I wandered for a bit, trying to evade cameras and cops. I thought I’d meet you at Aberdeen, but I wasn’t sure. It could have endangered you.”

“You’d have been more than welcome,” Cassie assured her, while Rachel merely squeezed her hand.

Melissa shrugged, squeezing back on Rachel’s hand. “I suppose, but that’s long past. On the way out of the Core, we passed Cortex Relay Ring 1, and I got the idea,” she said. “I got myself to the nearest moon at that time and got an investor in a short-range ship. That was paid off pretty quickly, as most people specialize in interplanetary transport, but if you can run cheaper than trains, you’ll make a good living in-world. Soonest opportunity, I took it out to one of the stations, had a good look at the tech. It’s really easy to do whatever you want there because they don’t expect anyone but workers to be bothering with it.

“From there, I designed and purchased equipment, taking it to 2K, which is always the last station they check if there’s a problem, giving me plenty of time to get out of the way if I need to. I changed worlds as needed, to stay as close to 2K as possible. Lastly, I took my bio-port designs and my savings back to the Core, where I hired a black market surgeon to install them.” She shrugged again. “Once I was hooked into the Cortex, organizing connections to do what I could not was fairly simple.”

Marco was watching her very carefully. “You mean you haven’t left 2K since…?”

“I’ve been camped there for over seven years. The last time I had to physically leave at all was four years ago,” said Melissa. “People are pretty grateful to be warned about alien invaders in their midst. Even more grateful are the escaped hosts that I help avoid detection. So it was pretty easy to set up a fresh food supply with bots. For the more serious stuff, like the things I had to do to get the experiments out, I was able to use Alliance security systems to track people that already knew, find the best of the best. That’s how I got Alan. Man didn’t know how close he was to being shot by the time I found him. He’d learned _everything_ and had no one to tell. That’s what I do. I tell. And I help. Just like I have with you.

“He never knew who I was, though, and I had no idea what kind of not-human he was until Ax arrived in the Verse. I asked him about that, and he thought it was best that Ax _not_ interrupt his current mission, freeing the experiments, asking only that I keep an eye out and let him know if something happened to his brother. We meant to tell Ax about Alan once the mission was over, but… Well, that never happened. But I kept my promise the best I could, making sure Ax's Andalite distress signal reached Alan’s communicator when that ship was attacked by Reavers.”

“You mentioned other experiments,” said Ax. “Were you responsible for the recovery of River Tam as well?”

Melissa hesitated, then repeated, “River Tam?”

Marco smirked. “We met her and her brother the other day,” he explained. “She was triggered, somehow, and took out the entire patronage of a border bar. Tom, somehow, found his way to her and fought her strike-for-strike, until her brother was able to trigger her to sleep. Oddly enough, pausa did not work on Tom in that instance. Erek had to tase him.”

Melissa nodded. “Then, yes, Alan and I worked to free River Tam,” she said. “You say the pause trigger stopped working?”

“He just got irritated with us,” said Erek. “When Mr. Tam triggered his sister to fall asleep, Tom attempted to attack him.”

“Wow,” said Melissa. She shrugged. “I, uh, guess that’s a good sign? I could dive back into the－”

“No!” Rachel cried. “Jesus, what is it with you and the Cortex? You could have died!”

Melissa finally pulled her hand out of Rachel's grip, scowling. “Because it’s the only way I get to see my parents for a few hours every three days, and it’s the only hope I have of ever seeing them free again.”

“And what are they going to see when they’re free?” Rachel demanded. “Melissa, you need a better support system, and when you actually do have support? You need to listen. If we hadn’t been looking for Tom’s trigger words, we never would have found you. _No one_ was looking.”

“Do you know how long I spent _in the Cortex_ working on Tom’s release?” Melissa demanded loudly. “Five days straight, with only two breaks the entire time. You want to tell me that wasn’t worth it? That it was too big of a risk?”

Rachel looked away. Cassie reached out and squeezed her shoulder but did not argue Melissa’s point.

“I have to reconnect soon,” she said. “They’re my parents. I have to let them know that I’m still here, and I still love them.”

“Ms. Chapman,” said a new voice behind her. “As you said, they are your parents. I can assure you that they know.”

She turned to look over her shoulder at the black man in a Shepherd’s uniform, grey hair braided back to his nape in cornrows, who had just entered the room. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.

He rolled his eyes. “I am called ‘Shepherd Book,’” he answered. “I’m the new Shepherd of this mission, having transferred a month ago.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow and finally took a good hard look at the room she was in. It looked like someone’s living room. Someone’s living room that hadn’t been redecorated in thirty years and had undergone the wear and tear of plenty of children and animals. “This is a mission?” she asked skeptically.

“I’m afraid our construction this far out is a bit different from that in the Core,” Book said politely.

“No, I mean why are we in a mission?” she said. She turned back to her friends and allies. “I thought we were in someone’s house. I didn’t think any of you were religious.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Everyone thinks a prostitute can’t be religious,” he grumbled.

“Because you’re not,” Rachel countered.

“For your information－!”

“Actually,” Erek said, interrupting them. “I’m the one who brought you here. I’m afraid I don’t have any direct connections to the people here or to the Good Shepherd, but I do have connections to this church, and Haven seemed far enough away from Alliance eyes.”

Tobias snorted. “It’s the edge of space. If it’s not far enough, we’re all doomed.”

“We are,” said Melissa at the same time that Ax argued that Haven was _not_ the edge of space.

“It’s a saying,” Tobias told his uncle.

“There is much more space past this planet and past your ‘Verse,’” Ax continued.

“Yes, we know,” Marco groaned. “And will you stop it with the ‘your’ thing?”

Cassie gave him a Look. “Be polite,” she warned. “For your sake if not his?” Marco made a face but quietened.

Melissa shoved a thumb in the direction of Shepherd Book. “So, is he in on what’s going on, or…?”

Book shook his head. “As a Shepherd, I will help all souls in any matter that I can, and, though I am here to listen, I do not require that－”

“The Verse is suffering under a secretive extrasystemic occupation,” she told him.

Book raised an eyebrow. “A… what?”

Melissa shrugged. “I don’t like the term ‘extraterrestrial,’” she explained. “It made sense on Earth That Was, but now here there’s over a hundred terras. We’re all extraterrestrial every time we planet-hop. Though, in a Verse with only one nation, the traditional meaning of ‘alien’ is uselessly archaic, it doesn’t sound very official.”

Book’s expression shifted from confused to unamused. “As I was saying,” he said politely, “you are not obligated to inform me of your troubles. Though, I would appreciate if you did not lie to my face.”

Melissa laughed and gestured to him while joking with the others, “Man, I never get tired of that reaction.”

“Sir,” said Marco, “I can assure you that what she’s telling you is true. And, as it is very difficult to tell allies from enemies, we’d appreciate if you didn’t inform anyone else without our foreknowledge.”

“Young man…” the Shepherd started.

“ _Companion_ Young Man,” Marco corrected playfully.

“I can prove it,” said Ax, and all eyes turned to him.

Tobias looked surprised. “Ax, man, you don’t have to.”

“I think it is time that I did,” said Ax. “A large portion of this has been word-of-mouth when it should not be, and it would be convenient to make an ally of this man as he is overseeing Melissa Chapman’s health.”

The crew exchanged glances, then Tobias and Cassie moved to the windows, where they pulled the curtains closed. When they gave Ax the signal, he began stripping out of his clothes, and Book looked away. “No, look,” Melissa urged, reaching back to pull at Book’s arm. “You’re going to want to see this.” Hesitantly, Book looked again, though he raised a hand to block some of Ax from view. Ax, meanwhile, closed his eyes and concentrated.

His skin paled, then took on a bluish pigment. Next, blue and tan fur spread across his body, revealing a smattering of tan freckles and a few swirls of darker blue. His muscle mass lessened slightly. His hair pulled back into his skull. His eyes became a vivid, jewel-like green. And then it got freaky.

New eyes began to grow on the top of his head. New fingers sprouted from his hands. With the most gruesome noises, a long, thick tail sprouted from his backside and his torso stretched as two new limbs sprouted from his midsection. He dropped onto these mid-limbs and his legs as they shifted into a more equine shape. His torso remained erect, taking on the general form of a centaur. That is, until the new eyes sprang into the air on individual stalks and his mouth stitched together and disappeared. His nose melted away as well, its place taken by three vertical slits. Lastly, a huge, scythe-shaped blade sprang from the end of his tail.

“Is he done?” asked Tobias, who had turned away as soon as bones started rearranging.

“I certainly hope so,” said Rachel.

“That’s what you look like?” asked Marco.

<Yes,> said Ax and half his audience flinched, not expecting his voice to enter their minds directly. The word hadn’t actually been English, but they’d understood it anyway.

“Impressive,” said Marco, and Ax seemed to preen a bit at that.

“This…” breathed Shepherd Book, staring at Ax with wide eyes. “This is significant.”

Cassie laughed, though she was still watching Ax with awe as well. “That’s one way to put it,” she said.

“So, this is what makes it difficult to tell enemies from allies?” asked Book.

“No, sir,” said Melissa. “Our enemies are Yeerks, a slug-like species which can invade the brain through the ear canal and seize control of the body. Aximili here is an Andalite; they are not currently our enemy.”

Ax’s main eyes shifted to her, narrowing suspiciously, and Tobias demanded, “What do you mean ‘not currently’?”

Melissa shrugged. “I’ve simply learned not to rule anything out,” she said, but she was just as warily watching Ax as he was watching her. “Especially given the coincidences that Elfangor refused to explain.”

<What coincidences?> Ax demanded.

She shrugged again. “Well,” she said, “it hasn’t escaped my notice that Gedds, the original hosts of the Yeerks, do not have the dexterity to create many of the fine instruments that the Yeerks currently use. Nor do the Hork-Bajir or Taxxons. It has also not escaped my notice that the Yeerk Dracons carried by many hosts have a strong resemblance to the Andalite Shredders carried by Loren Matsumoto and, formerly, Alan Fangor. Or that there is Andalite code in some of the Yeerk systems.”

“What?” Rachel demanded, turning toward Ax angrily.

“They… They’re probably from the same planet,” said Tobias.

“No,” said Melissa. “There’s been mention of an Andalite blockade of the Yeerk homeworld. They wouldn’t blockade their own homeworld. Besides, the ‘your thing,’ as Companion Guerra put it? With both Elfangor and Aximili, everything of the Yeerks’ is ‘their.’ If they shared planets, suns, even systems, it would be ‘our,’ not ‘their.’” She sneered at Ax. “So, you gonna keep to the same quiet as your brother?”

Ax was glaring, standing tensely, tail arched high over his head. <I have no need to defend my people to you,> he said.

She shrugged. “Of course not,” she said. “But if that’s the hand you’re gonna play, don’t be shocked when people aren’t over-eager to trust you.”

“Ax…” Tobias said, his voice coming out as a pleading whine, so much loaded into that one syllable. Ax glanced at him and, slowly, his shoulders sagged and his tail lowered again.

Finally, he said, <There is a law among my people. It is called Seerow’s Kindness. It means that never again shall we show the empathy toward another species that was shown to the Yeerks. Our Prince Seerow, he was with the team that discovered them. He was very fond of the Yeerks, who were technologically and scientifically deprived at the time, and he taught them of many things. Sympathetic for their circumstances, he created portable Yeerk pools and Kandrona generators so that never again would a Yeerk die for not being able to return to a pool to feed within three days.

<They then took the pools and generators, and then they killed Andalites and stole our ships, and a plague was unleashed upon the galaxy. We have been hunting after them ever since and have vowed to never make the same mistake again. Never will we share technology, knowledge, information, or empathy with another species.>

Melissa blinked in surprise. “I didn’t actually expect you to say,” she said. “I… thank you.”

One stalk eye glanced surreptitiously toward Tobias. <I didn’t do it for _you_ ,> he said.

Melissa smirked. “No, of course not.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Cassie.

“On the 26th, I hook up to the Cortex,” she said. “From there, I’ll be able to tell you what the next move will be.”


	5. Chapter 5

Melissa lay topless on her stomach on a bed set up next to the mission’s Cortex Access Point, the only one in town. The front of the thing had been pried open, and a slew of wires spilled out down the wall and across the floor, resembling a gutted animal. Erek and Ax had managed to slap together a close resemblance of Melissa's technical designs, though Ax swore up and down that he was capable of improving them. “Later,” Melissa had told him. “For something as important as this, let’s stick to designs we _know_ will work for me.”

So, on the 26th, she found herself lying on a bed with her back exposed to two space aliens and her former best friend. There were nine metal ports following the line of her spine from the base of her neck down to her tailbone, each an inch wide and three inches deep, surrounded by vicious scars.

Erek’s fingertips traced delicately over one of the ugliest scars. “This looks painful,” he said.

“It is,” she said, smiling up at him over her shoulder. “But it’s a small price.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Rachel reminded her.

“Yeah, I do,” she said.

“Are you ready?” Ax asked, having just finished checking over the technology and connections to make sure it wouldn’t kill her. Melissa nodded, and he approached her. Carefully, he aligned the first cable with the fifth port, as she had instructed. He drew a breath, then he shoved it in. Melissa grabbed at the bed and buried her face in her pillow with a pained sob. Rachel kissed her on her head and stroked her hair comfortingly.

Erek hesitated. “Miss Chapman?” he asked.

Melissa nodded emphatically. “Do it,” she hissed. “We don’t have all day.”

Erek took the next cable and aligned it with her third port and shoved it in, causing her to cry out. The next one, shoved into her seventh port, did not go any better, and Rachel clutched at her friend, whispering kindnesses against Melissa’s cheek, more for her own sake than Melissa’s.

Next, Ax connected the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth cables. By the last one, Melissa was sobbing and gripping Rachel hard enough to bruise. “This is too much,” Rachel objected, but Melissa shook her head and somehow managed to sob out that she wanted to continue.

Looking somewhat sick, Erek picked up the last two cables, positioning them over the first and ninth ports. These would have to go in at the same time. “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked her.

Melissa nodded. “Do it,” she hissed again.

Erek thrust them in.

Melissa didn’t scream or cry that time. She just… stopped. Like a dropped doll. Like a corpse. Erek quickly moved to monitor her pulse and breath, and he found she was still alive. “Aximili?” he asked.

Ax had picked up the access point’s screen, still connected by a few slim cords, to read the display. “She is using her cognitive ability to manipulate the Cortex at a faster rate than I can read. She seems slightly hindered by our distance from the core of the system, but not much,” he said. “Likely, she is searching for her parents, as that is her primary concern.”

“Gee, you think?” asked Rachel, rubbing Melissa’s back despite the fact that it was unlikely her friend could feel her comfort anymore.

“Yes,” said Ax, not understanding her tone, and Rachel rolled her eyes while Erek hid a smile. He continued standing there, watching the screen, so Rachel climbed onto the bed and curled protectively around Melissa, briefly wiping away the tears before snuggling in against her. Eventually, Ax announced that Melissa had settled into a Yeerk-coded security system and was accessing video input and audio output, though she was using her own set of subroutines to continue combing the Cortex.

Rachel hadn’t realized that she’d fallen asleep until she was roused by Melissa twitching against her, still unconscious and attached to the Cortex. Ax and Erek were both hurriedly adjusting components and fussing over code. “What happened?” Rachel asked, sitting up. She tried to steady Melissa, but Melissa just continued twitching.

“She’s attempting to retreat,” Ax explained, “but that appears to be a difficult endeavor for her. It seems that a security program has identified her software as malicious.”

“Is it going to hurt her?” Rachel demanded.

“No! No, of course not!” Erek insisted, turning worriedly to her. “This is all happening in the virtual realm.”

“She’s seizing!” Rachel argued.

“ _Spasming_ ,” Erek corrected. “The way one might do if they were having a bad dream.”

Rachel frowned, not sure she believed him. “Then why are you two so agitated?” she asked suspiciously.

“There’s a possibility of Humanity’s exposure,” Ax muttered, still tapping at the display screen.

“Also the physical effects of this stress and agitation are not beneficial to her condition,” Erek added, gifting Ax with a scathing glance despite the fact that Ax wasn’t looking up to see it.

“Yes,” Ax agreed absently. “She is approaching－”

“AAGH!” Melissa cried, sitting up so suddenly that Rachel was pushed off the bed. “Hurry! Get them out! Get them out! Order doesn’t matter!”

Ax and Erek rushed to wrench out the plugs in her spine as she screamed in pain, leaving her panting on her hands and knees on the bed. Rachel scrambled to her feet. “Melissa?!” she pleaded, hurrying back to her side. “Melissa, are you okay?”

“The Operative!” Melissa cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “The Operative is coming! You－ You have to tell them to run! If they run… If they run, they might live!”


End file.
